How to value Tesla — Tesla’s soaring valuation — it breached the $1 Trillion level recently on the news that Hertz had placed a massive order for Model 3s– continues to confound some market watchers. By conventional metrics, neither its sales nor profits, even projected explosively, merit such riches. (CEO Elon Musk, himself, wondered why the Hertz order had spiked the valuation, since the company isn’t lacking demand for its products.) Meanwhile, Tesla bears are packing it in: The percentage of Tesla stock borrowed by traders has slumped to its lowest level since the company went public.

Nearly 50 years ago the philosopher Thomas Nagel postulated a thought experiment called, “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?” that quickly became one the most influential contributions to the sub-field of consciousness studies called “philosophy of mind.” Today, as one half of America tears its hair out trying…

J.D. Vance’s 2016 best seller, Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of growing up in — and ultimately escaping from — the quicksand of endemic, debilitating poverty in America’s Rust Belt, is coming to Netflix, November 24. The book was prescient in predicting the appeal of an emergent Donald Trump. …

In technology, government is not the problem; it is the solution New camera systems are usually the focus of any iPhone launch. …

On Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, the Reichstag, home of the German parliament in Berlin, was consumed by a massive fire in a daring act of arson. It turned out to be a pivotal event. The Nazis promptly blamed the Communists for the fire and for plotting against the German government. The very next day Hitler urged President Hindenburg to issue an emergency decree to suspend most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression…

In his 1973 Pulitzer prize winning book, The Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker maintains that we live life as a constant struggle to control our basic anxiety: the fear of death. …

Unsurprisingly, millions around the globe have turned to the internet for solace as the pandemic sweeps the land; searches related to prayer in 75 countries skyrocketed to their highest levels in five years in March. Online ministries are doing a land office business in cyber conversions. …

We’ve long since abandoned the belief that natural disasters are divinely initiated punishments. And yet, as the virus ravages the land, who amongst us couldn’t be forgiven a slight twinge of something like guilt — a vague sting of what could be called “karmic justice?” Is this divine retribution for…

There are reasons enough to hate him; yet another recitation of his flaws, transgressions and inhumanity is pointless. Especially since every day reveals a fresh horror. …